Michigan's conservative Supreme Court is seeking to reconcile whether 31,000 unionized state employees are covered by a right-to-work law, hearing opposing arguments Tuesday on whether lawmakers stepped on the turf of a panel that regulates labor conditions for those staffers.

U.S. employers advertised the most job openings in nearly 14 years in November, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That suggests businesses are determined to keep adding staff because they are confident strong economic growth will create more demand for their goods and services.

Just over two decades after lobbying unsuccessfully against the North American Free Trade Agreement, U.S. labor unions are again voicing strong reservations to a proposed major trade-liberalization deal.

Month after month, U.S. hiring keeps rising, and unemployment keeps falling. Eventually, pay and inflation are supposed to start surging in response. But that isn't happening, and economists are struggling to explain the phenomenon.

As you sip that ice-cold Coca-Cola, the workers who helped manufacture it are worrying about losing their jobs. Just this morning, Coca-Cola announced it will be laying off between 1,600 and 1,800 jobs throughout the next few months in an effort to help trim costs.

The first full week of 2015 has been eventful for the manufacturing sector with no shortage of news making this week’s decision for ‘Winner’ and ‘Loser’ difficult. However, after careful consideration, Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre, co-founders of Ecovative, are this week’s ‘Winner’ while Fayetteville and Dayton, Tennessee receive the ‘Loser’ title.

Manufacturing.Net's Bridget Bergin recently had the chance to talk about trends in manufacturing and construction with Dan Parkinson, Industrial Market Sector Leader at Brasfield & Gorrie, one of the largest privately-held construction firms in the country.

Although 2015 has just begun, it has already been a big year for advocates for a higher minimum wage. On Thursday, January 1, President Obama’s executive order to raise the minimum wage in new federal contracts to $10.10 an hour went into effect, benefiting about 200,000 workers.

The Associated Press recently reported on the dangers of noncompetition agreements for workers. The article mainly focused on minimum wage employees working outside of the manufacturing sector, however, this is an issue that translates across industries.

Non-competition agreements are better known in contracts for senior executives who have business secrets of interest to competitors. However, court records show the restrictions might trap them in their current jobs, allowing their employers to pay them lower salaries, experts said.

Editorial Director Jeff Reinke discussed the outlook for manufacturers in 2015 with Dan Miklovic, the Principal Analyst in Asset Performance Management at LNS Research. They covered topics such as Big Data, job creation and tech trends for the upcoming year.

More than five years removed from the Great Recession, worries had taken hold at the start of the year that perhaps the world's largest economy had slid into a semi-permanent funk. But consumers, businesses and investors, after enduring a brutal winter, showed renewed vigor as the year wore on and set the United States apart from much of the world.